


A Single Friend, My World

by gideonbd



Category: Hustle, Man From U.N.C.L.E., NCIS
Genre: Angst, Crossover Pairings, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Older Lads, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 19:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gideonbd/pseuds/gideonbd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The room in this hotel is like so many other hotel rooms he’s eaten, slept and/or fucked in throughout his tumultuous seventy-eight years of life. Plain albeit pristine walls with a painting or two hanging on them. Clean beige curtains, currently half-drawn and letting in a cheery cascade of sunlight. Dark brown carpet. Twin beds with burgundy bedspreads and fluffy pillows. A minimalist dressing table with a rectangular mirror. A slim, black television set. Another table, round and smaller than the dressing table, with two cushioned chairs set facing each other.</p>
<p>And on one of those chairs, basking in the sunshine with an ever-handsome, ageless face turned towards the window and blue eyes shut, sits his sole reason for living on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Single Friend, My World

**Author's Note:**

> Gah, I really want to finish this story, but I figured I'd post what I've written so far and then post the rest when I'm done. This is my first Man from U.N.C.L.E. and NCIS _and_ Hustle story. In one! There are spoilers for Albert Stroller's and Ducky Mallard's backgrounds, and I'm definitely ignoring that '15 Years Later' MfU movie. :P
> 
> Also, a minor point for MfU fans regarding the character Mark Slate: For this story, I decided to use the original character background from the Moonglow Affair with the Noel Harrison incarnation since Harrison's version is more well-known due to the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. series. Sorry if it's confusing!
> 
> Soundtracks: Sting's [Shape of my Heart](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=037uSAIahho), Michael Nyman's [Big My Secret](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jh0WoUBDEs) (the first 2:40+ minutes, anyway) and Avril Lavigne's [I'm with You](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aFied2YYVg).

**A Single Friend, My World**

 

_And if I told you that I loved you,_  
 _You'd maybe think there's something wrong,_  
 _I'm not a man of too many faces,_  
 _The mask I wear is one_

_~ Sting, Shape Of My Heart_

 

The room’s number is 112, emblazoned in bold gold on a mahogany door.

No matter how many times he sees that number, his hand will always freeze and hover in the air in front of the door handle for a few seconds, in disbelief, or _joy_. Or a mixture of both, a near-paralyzing amalgam of emotions that don’t show on his face due to decades of mastering his poker face. Not even in his hooded, hazel eyes that have seen so much. Perhaps _too_ much for an old, disillusioned man like him.

Albert Stroller, an old, disillusioned grifter. A scammer. A _cheater_.

But no matter how many times he remembers that about himself, remembers that the man in the room beyond the closed door _knows_ that about him now, his hand will always bridge the inches of air to grasp the door handle. Answering the silent call of that man, like he used to over forty years ago. Like he still does.

The door swings open without a sound.

The room in this hotel is like so many other hotel rooms he’s eaten, slept and/or fucked in throughout his tumultuous seventy-eight years of life. Plain albeit pristine walls with a painting or two hanging on them. Clean beige curtains, currently half-drawn and letting in a cheery cascade of sunlight. Dark brown carpet. Twin beds with burgundy bedspreads and fluffy pillows. A minimalist dressing table with a rectangular mirror. A slim, black television set. Another table, round and smaller than the dressing table, with two cushioned chairs set facing each other.

And on one of those chairs, basking in the sunshine with an ever-handsome, ageless face turned towards the window and blue eyes shut, sits his sole reason for living on.

“Do I call you _Albie_ today?”

He halts at the dressing table, propping himself against it to blatantly stare at the other man, smiling softly. Smiling at the eternal lustrousness of blond hair gone dark silver, at the steel-rimmed spectacles perched upon that patrician nose, at the Scottish accent he knows is learned and not innate. At that silly polka-dotted, maroon bow tie flaring out from the collar of a fine suit very similar to his own pin-striped, dark blue one.

At the tiny quirk of those miraculously still-luscious lips in a smile, one that only he has ever had the privilege to witness, to know it to be _true_. To know it to be _his_ , alone. Once upon a time.

“Do I get to call you _Ducky_ today?” he replies with what he hopes is a droll tone and not a voice wavering with the weight of all that he harbors within himself for this man. Forty-eight years is a damn long time for unvoiced thoughts – _feelings_ – to grow and thrive, even locked away deep in the recesses of his mind as they are.

His breath catches in his throat when a gentle chuckle fills the cool air of the room. God, even that _laugh_ is as endearing as he remembers it.

There is no way in hell he’s going to survive this meeting without fracturing something inside.

“Hello, Napoleon.”

The Scottish accent is gone, replaced by that oh-so-familiar Russian-tinged British accent, and _god_ , the last time _anyone_ had called him by that name – his _real_ name – he’d been right here in New York City. In his U.N.C.L.E.-allotted apartment, packing his bags like a madman, stuffing them unceremoniously with his hoards of suits and t-shirts and jeans and anything else he can grab, his left shoulder tingling from the lack of his shoulder holster and gun, his chest seizing time and again, his eyes searing and his vision so mysteriously _blurred_ –

“Illya.”

He thinks he’s said it casually, said that name as if it isn’t his holy word, the sum of everything that means anything to him at all, but the other man stands up and comes to him without another word, welcoming him with arms that embrace him tightly, unreservedly. The lump that abruptly lodges in his throat is massive, becoming even more so when he senses that head of lustrous, dark silver hair rest itself upon his shoulder as if it’s meant to be there. As if it’s _always_ meant to be there.

“Napoleon,” he hears again, this time whispered, and no, it’s certainly not Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard – Scottish chief medical examiner for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service for more than a decade – in his arms now, who’d almost been roped as his next mark for a desperate influx of big cash into a wallet on the brink of collecting only dust. Dr. Mallard _might_ have been a potential mark, but _Illya Kuryakin?_

Oh, even he, the once legendary Napoleon Solo who was considered the top U.N.C.L.E. agent in America even by the evil T.H.R.U.S.H., isn’t _that_ crazy as to risk losing a limb or three plus a number of organs (and very likely his head too) by robbing the man who was once also one of U.N.C.L.E.’s top agents. In the _world_.

Illya. His partner, long, long ago. His best friend. The _only_ friend who had known the real him, who knew who he really was before he fled from America to England like a trampled dog with its tail between its legs, taking himself out of the game before Mr. Waverly could take him out first via red tape. Or gun. After his ultimate fuck up on that fateful day in the spring of 1972, the mistake that had cost U.N.C.L.E. the lives of more than a few good agents, cost him his life as it was, cost him his _partner_ , well … it was unbelievable that Mr. Waverly _hadn’t_ had him finished off with a blast of lead to the head.

“Sit with me, Napoleon. We have _much_ to catch up on.”

He lets Illya guide him by the arm to the nearest bed and sits next to Illya on the side of the bed, facing the window. The sunlight reaches their lower legs and feet, burnishing their leather Oxford shoes, and he gazes at Illya’s pair, scrutinizing the decorative perforations of the toe caps. Did Illya ever wear half-brogue shoes like those when they were still U.N.C.L.E. agents? 

He can’t recall. Then again, he never did spend a lot of time studying Illya’s shoes. He was usually studying Illya’s _face_. When Illya wasn’t looking, of course.

“Are you still going by the name Albert Stroller?”

They’re sitting so close that their arms are pressed against each other, Illya’s left knee touching his right, and he has to remind himself to breathe and look into Illya’s eyes – still so blue and beautiful! – and smile.

“Yes. It’s been my name for the past forty years. I don’t see myself changing it again anytime soon.”

“So you _do_ prefer to be called Albert, then?”

His smile becomes much more genuine and wide.

“No, I didn’t say that.”

Illya’s eyes twinkle with amusement.

“You _still_ don’t get to call me Ducky.”

Napoleon pouts, but with a twinkle in his own eyes, he retorts, “Why? Because only people in your current life can?”

Illya shakes his head once.

“No. Because it’s not my true name,” Illya says quietly, the twinkle in his eyes radiating into something even brighter, something very _dangerous_ to the lifelong barriers inside Napoleon and that lump is back in his throat again, littler but yearning to swell, just like the immovable iota of hope in the left side of his chest. He imagines himself thumping on that portion of his chest with a fist, irately so.

_Stop it. You aren’t worthy to have his attention, much less his love after what you did to him. Stop it, damn you._

“Hopefully _this_ time, we’ll get to have an actual conversation,” Illya says after a long, somewhat awkward minute of hush. The tiny quirk of his lips is still there.

“The first time wasn’t even planned!”

Illya lets out a short laugh, eyes crinkling.

“Indeed. I can still recall Jethro’s face when you swaggered into the room –“

“ _Hey_ now, I don’t swagger –“

“Yes, you do, Napoleon. Now let me speak.” At Napoleon’s wave of one hand and a more pronounced pout, Illya says with eyes a-twinkle again, “As I said, when you _swaggered_ into the room, you obviously hadn’t expected Jethro to be there with me.”

“Or all that _spying_ equipment. Or the _guns_.”

“Were you surprised that I’m still in law enforcement? Or that I was in a hotel room with another man who had a gun in hand and was pointing it at your head?”

Deadpan, Napoleon says, “Actually, what really surprised me was that he was wearing nothing but a _towel_ and it looked like it was going to _drop_ at any moment while I was ass down on the floor. With my _face_ less than two feet away from his _groin_.”

Illya laughs a second time, louder, and Napoleon can’t help but grin at the sound, at the lines of merriment around Illya’s eyes and broad smile.

“Yes, that would have been rather _uncomfortable_.”

“Not as uncomfortable as him putting a bullet in my head, if you hadn’t convinced him otherwise.” Napoleon shifts on the bed, just enough that he’s turned more towards Illya and can see more of Illya’s face. “So who _is_ he? This Jethro guy.”

He almost also asks, _is he your partner now?_

He doesn’t.

Illya glances at him, eyes incisive, then says, “Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. I work with him in the NCIS’ Major Case Response Team. Technically he’s my _boss_ , but he is also a good friend. I’ve known him since the early ‘90s. We met in France.”

“France, huh?” Napoleon asks, his placid tone belying the clenching of his stomach. If Illya had been in Paris at the time, Illya had been a mere hour’s flight away from him in London. Just an _hour_ away –

“Yes.” Illya clears his throat and glances at the floor. “He got me out of a _complicated_ situation when I … pushed a French police officer off a cliff.”

Napoleon’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead at the mumbled admission. It takes him several seconds to say, “You … pushed a French _cop_ … off a _cliff_.”

“Yes. Off a sixty-foot cliff.”

Illya continues to stare at the floor, twiddling his thumbs, while Napoleon’s eyebrows arch yet more.

“A _sixty-foot cliff_.”

“Yes. Into a lake.”

Napoleon blinks.

“You pushed a French cop off a sixty-foot cliff … into a _lake_.”

“Yes.”

Napoleon is glad that Illya isn’t looking at his visage where his lips are twitching.

“Dare I ask _why?_ ”

Illya immediately scowls. The downturn of lips, the groove between the eyebrows and the _blazing_ of those blue eyes are so _familiar_ , so much like the frowns Illya used to display whenever the Affair they were embroiled in was going topsy-turvy, that Napoleon’s breath hitches once more.

“He had corrupted a crime scene,” Illya growls, his Russian accent surging. “He had it coming! And anyway, there was a _lake_ below the cliff. Not solid ground.”

Losing the battle against mirth, Napoleon smiles and shakes his head.

“That’s my Illya.”

If it didn’t cause him to appear a sheer fool, he would have kicked himself hard in the ass for allowing those words to tumble off his tongue. As it is, he stiffens instead, his hands clutching his knees, his gaze flitting away from Illya to random spots in the room. To anywhere, at anything but the man sitting beside him and staring at him now.

Who the fuck is he to think that Illya would permit such _possessiveness_ from him after the _decades_ that have passed? Decades in which he hadn’t contacted Illya in any way whatsoever, not even to let Illya know that he was alive at least?

Decades, in which Illya had ample time to brew even more ample amounts of anger and resentment and probably _loathing_ too towards him, after what he’d done?

The touch of a large hand on his and the entwining of their fingers is the last thing Napoleon expects, so shocking to him that when it fully sinks in that Illya is holding his hand, he already has Illya’s in a death grip. Illya’s hand is warm. Calloused. Thinner, frailer than he recollects, blue veins stark beneath pale, smooth skin.

_Traitor_ , he thinks as he glowers at his own frail and pale hand, but his hand doesn’t loosen one bit.

Neither does Illya’s.

“Jethro’s a lot like you, you know,” Illya says casually, resuming their tête-à-tête.

“Oh? How so?” Napoleon says as casually, dragging his eyes away from their linked hands to Illya’s face. Illya’s features are impassive. Deceptively so, since those blue eyes are gleaming with a tenderness that makes another of his traitorous body parts, high up in his chest, ache.

“For one, he has sarcasm honed to a fine art. Two, he has next to no forbearance for state-of-the-art technology and prefers to leave scientific endeavors to the qualified. Three, he’s bossy, smug, impatient, an absolute Don Juan –“ At Napoleon’s playful slap on his upper arm, Illya’s lips curve up in a smirk and he adds, “And oh yes, he has a predilection for _smacking_ people too!”

It’s a wonderful feeling for Napoleon to chortle with Illya again, till his eyes are squeezed shut and his shoulders are hunched from the jollity while Illya leans against him, their heads nearly brushing. When was the last time he’d actually laughed like this? When _was_ the last time he’d shared laughter with Illya like this?

Jesus, how he’d _missed_ it all these years.

“And like you, he’s also a charming gentleman. A no-nonsense professional who gives his work his very best. Handsome. Respectable. Kind, with a sincere affection for children and concern for their safety and wellbeing. A superior who cares very much for his subordinates too. Very much. He even speaks Russian fluently.”

Just like that, the damn lump is back in Napoleon’s throat, bigger than ever. It’s almost too good to be true that Illya thinks all that of him. Maybe Illya’s suffering from _amnesia_ of some kind. Yeah, maybe Illya had, at some point, swallowed a bottle’s worth of Capsule B and completely wiped out his memories of that day in 1972. Or maybe, _maybe_ the six-day coma Illya had suffered as a direct result of that day’s events _did_ damage his brain like the doctors had anxiously speculated and the only reason Illya had requested for him upon awakening from said coma was because Illya didn’t _remember_ what he’d –

“I should mark my calendar today.”

Napoleon blinks hard, jolted out of his morose train of thought.

“What?”

“Finally, I have figured out the perfect technique to leave Napoleon Solo at a loss for words.”

Well, what is he to do in response except mirror Illya’s smirk and good-naturedly nudge Illya’s shoulder with his own?

It’s anything better than asking Illya whether he recalls the explosion that hurled him fifteen feet into the air and cracked his collarbone, ribs, left leg and _skull_ on merciless tarmac. Who knows what else Illya may recall then.

Their fingers still intertwined, Napoleon asks, “Does he know?”

Illya seems to read his mind, like he used to when they were still partners. It is both comforting and unsettling.

“That I was once No.2 of Section II of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement?”

Napoleon nods, and Illya says, “No. No one does. No one _alive_ anymore, apart from you.”

Illya’s enigmatic answer prompts him to look at Illya, to seek extra clues in the indecipherable set of those appealing features. If even someone like Special Agent Gibbs – a good friend for at least ten to fifteen years by Illya’s own disclosure – doesn’t know a thing about Illya’s U.N.C.L.E. past, just how _long_ has Illya masqueraded as a Scottish doctor and medical examiner? Twenty years? _Thirty?_ And since U.N.C.L.E. was permanently decommissioned in 1985 (last he checked in 1993), did the persona of Dr. Mallard begin its existence as a role for an U.N.C.L.E. Affair? If so, why has Illya carried it on until today? Is it because it’s safer to do so in a post-U.N.C.L.E. world in which former T.H.R.U.S.H. agents are still on the loose, ravenous for vengeance?

Or did Illya adopt a façade for the same reasons he did?

To escape the past. Escape the condemning stares, the unspoken judgment begging to be laid down by a jury of his peers. Escape the reality that he remained alive while others didn’t.

But Illya had nothing to do with how things went down so disastrously. Illya had nothing to do with that ill-fated decision. _His_ decision.

Illya had nothing whatsoever to do with April Dancer going up in flames from the scorching bomb blasts, transforming into a staggering, screaming, blackened figure that, to Napoleon’s horror, had evidently felt every lick of fire before she died in the rescue helicopter en route to the closest hospital.

Air-conditioned as the room is, Napoleon senses blistering streaks zigzagging up his left arm and across his left shoulder blade once again, shadows of what they’d been as he’d crouched over Illya’s sprawled, grievously wounded body and shielded the unconscious man from raining debris. Phantom pain, one U.N.C.L.E. doctor had termed it. Peculiar for the fact that he hadn’t lost any limbs and barely has any scars from his injuries. Psychological. Incurable. Pain that he’ll endure for life. _Good_.

He flexes his left hand as he says, “So … what exactly did you tell him when we first met in Washington, D.C., about me?”

“That you are an old, trusted friend.”

His chest swells at the murmured words.

“And that was enough for him?”

“Yes,” Illya simply says, and it is enough for Napoleon too. He takes a deep breath, then says, “It _is_ nice to be able to chat with you without having a gun in my face, for a change.”

Illya’s lips twitch for an instant.

“Understandable. But the last time, Jethro wasn’t around to be the third wheel.”

“No, but he _did_ call you away before we even got past the hellos and how-are-yous.”

“He _is_ my boss, Napoleon. He is not a man who abides unprofessionalism or any work that is less than exemplary.”

“Like you.”

This time, Illya gives him a visible smile.

“Like me.”

Again, there is a minute of awkward silence, in which Illya sits calmly and gazes at him with blue eyes far too astute for Napoleon’s peace of mind while he studies a non-existent strand of lint on the inner right thigh of his trousers. His treacherous hand _still_ won’t release Illya’s.

But Illya isn’t letting go either.

“Third time’s the charm?” Napoleon eventually says, glancing into Illya’s eyes.

“Yes. I do hope so.”

There is something about the soft tone of Illya’s voice, a tone he’s never heard Illya speak with before. A tone he never _dreamed_ he’d hear Illya speak with, particularly towards _him_. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear that Illya had just … _flirted_ with him.

_Oh, great. You haven’t seen the guy for forty damn years, and here you are, thinking with your dick! A dick, by the way, that hasn’t gotten up for a looooong time, buddy boy._

“It’s an omen, don’t you think? Room _112_.”

And again, Illya is the one advancing their conversation, now the suave, silver-tongued talker and he the reticent, nervous old geezer. When did _that_ change occur?

“I didn’t think you the superstitious type, Illya. Man of science that you are.”

He savors the glide of Illya’s name from his mouth, a nectar of letters he’d forbidden himself to think, much less utter, since he resigned from U.N.C.L.E. and vamoosed.

“Dr. Mallard is, but not _me_.” Illya tilts his head. “It just seems … rather inexplicable that all three times, without any planning by either one of us, the room we would be given would have our U.N.C.L.E. ranks combined.”

Napoleon smiles at that. It figures Illya had also noticed it.

“Section VI got the first badge right with the Roman numeral.”

“But not with the second one. You went from being ‘II’ to ‘11’, and you never bothered to get them to correct it.” Illya pauses, then adds drolly, “And considering I was _‘2’_ …”

Napoleon snorts in amusement, then puts on an outwardly arrogant expression.

“I think of it this way: Section VI must have considered me so _magnificent_ an agent, my badge _had_ to state I was No.1 twice.”

Illya groans and rolls his eyes towards the ceiling, an exaggerated reaction that dredges a chuckle out of Napoleon even as the voice in his head rebukes him yet again.

_But they and the rest of U.N.C.L.E. didn’t think that for long, did they? Not after the fifth body rolled in looking and stinking like charred meat._

His humor expires swiftly, his mind beset by the imagery – no, the _memory_ of standing in the morgue located in the second lowest level of U.N.C.L.E. headquarters here in New York, staring sightlessly at the half-dozen, shrouded corpses that were once agents from Sections II and III. Agents who were, just a day ago, alive and well. Agents who were his _friends_. One of them had been the older brother of another agent from Section IV, a young brunette with huge brown eyes who Napoleon had been flirting with for weeks. He’d let her strike him across the face, let her beat him with fists till his lower lip split and his nose bled and she had to be towed away by three men, crying hysterically and asking Napoleon why, why, _why?_

He didn’t have an answer then. He’d sat on the chilly, tiled floor with his back against the metal sink, his knees drawn to his chest, waiting for hours for one from his dead teammates, but they didn’t tell him anything.

Forty years on, he still has no answer.

“Being a chief medical examiner for the Navy is a far cry from being an U.N.C.L.E. field agent, no doubt about that.”

Illya is gazing at his face again. Examining it. Seeing everything splayed across it. Seeing _through_ it.

“The dead don’t speak much, do they?” Napoleon blurts out, rife with the feeling that Illya knows precisely what he’d been thinking about.

“They do, just not the way the living do. It’s a matter of understanding their language. Of knowing what to look for, and then putting together their words into a coherent passage for those of us who still walk the earth. Those who wish to listen.” Illya angles his head to one side, nodding to himself. “But you do have a point, yes, the dead don’t speak like we do and sometimes … sometimes the conversation _can_ be quite one-sided. Still, I speak to them, as any courteous host would to his guests.”

One of Napoleon’s eyebrows quirk upwards. So on top of being the talkative one between the two of them now, Illya happily talks with _dead_ people too?

And here he’d thought Illya couldn’t possibly surprise him anymore.

“You _chitchat_ with the, _uh_ , bodies?”

“Guests, Napoleon. Guests. And yes, I do. It not only helps me with my work, it also …”

“Also what?”

Illya’s fingers tighten around his.

“It also keeps the ghosts at bay,” Illya murmurs, delicately, and Napoleon knows that Illya isn’t talking about scary ghouls in the night, about vampires in capes or the decayed undead starving for brains. Those monsters can be dealt with, straightforwardly. A priest with a bible would do the trick, or a cross or holy water, wooden stakes and shotguns. _His_ monsters, however, follow him everywhere he goes. Insuperable, immortal. Impervious to all practices of exorcism.

Can Illya see them now, swirling around them, heavy as mountains upon his creaking shoulders and cold as ice within him?

Does Illya know that he _wants_ his monsters, his _ghosts_ to stay with him?

For a man like him, it is fair punishment. The least of what he deserves.

“Napoleon … Mr. Waverly never stopped searching for you until his death in 1978.”

Mr. Waverly’s passing doesn’t stun Napoleon. He’d heard the news in the mid-‘80s, purely by accident from a corrupt chief inspector who’d worked with U.N.C.L.E. London on several cases, a lowlife from whom he had delightedly swindled over £60,000 and a gold ring or three. It had sickened him to his stomach to hear his former boss’ name coming from the cop, to hear the glee in the sonofabitch’s blather about how _easy_ his ‘extracurricular activities’ had been since Alexander Waverly kicked the bucket and the agent who’d been slated to supersede Waverly had vanished without a trace in 1972.

Napoleon hadn’t believed the last part then. He still doesn’t. There must have been another U.N.C.L.E. agent who upped and disappeared after he did, another agent Mr. Waverly had chosen as his successor and hadn’t informed anyone about it. Not him. No. It couldn’t have been him. Mr. Waverly would _never_ have picked him as the next head of Section I, not after he killed those U.N.C.L.E. agents. And the innocents. So _many_ of them.

But … if Illya is telling him the truth, why _did_ Mr. Waverly search for him?

He smirks grimly to himself, and answers that question for himself.

“I guess he must have wanted to bring me to _trial_ for what happened. Badly.”

Illya says nothing to that, merely gazing at him with those perceptive eyes through those steel-rimmed spectacles, as if perceiving something about him that he himself can’t. It sends a shiver down his spine, one that oddly stems from both fear and hope.

_Hope for what? Absolution? Yeah, go on dreaming about that, old man. Go on trying to lie and steal for your ticket to heaven. Go on._

“Were you in England all the time?”

He doesn’t hear any reproach in Illya’s tone. Then again, Illya was a maestro at controlling his facial expressions and tenor during their days as partners. He highly doubts that skill has diminished, seeing as Illya has been successfully living a double life for the past twenty or thirty years or more. Just like him.

“Yeah. Stayed in London, although I did move to Birmingham for a while. I’d go back and forth between England and the States now and then. Mostly Las Vegas. Went to Indonesia once, but … I can’t go back there. Ever.”

“Why not?”

“I … sold the Indonesian Air Force some fighter jets in the ‘70s and they …” Napoleon grimaces. “Still haven’t arrived.”

To his amazement, Illya chortles with amusement, and he smiles, shaking his head at himself. What would Illya say if he told the story of how he scammed a greedy rat of an English earl out of £500,000 by pretending to be a mystical seer of the future? What would Illya say if he told the story of how he almost netted _three million_ quid from a dirty art dealer who was conning his own clients?

What would Illya say if he told Illya that the sound of his laughter has somehow dispelled his ghosts, even just for a while?

Probably something sardonic. Something tongue-in-cheek about such startling sentimentality from him.

So he keeps his mouth shut.

“Since we’ve both never had a fondness for humid, tropical weather, I don’t see a problem with never _vacationing_ in Indonesia again.”

Napoleon sends Illya a quizzical glance, one that Illya misses as Illya has his head bowed, still smiling. Wait a minute, why would him being unable to return to Indonesia affect _Illya?_ It’s not like Illya wants him to stick around and spend more _time_ with him in the days ahead … does he?

Illya suddenly clears his throat. Then, looking at the floor, he says gruffly, “You’d told me before how much you liked London, that you’d even considered living there one day. So when you … left, it was the logical choice as the first city in which to find you.”

The hesitation, fleeting as it was, does not go undetected by Napoleon. It digs in sharp, like a knife-cut along his finger.

“I couldn’t join the search at first. I was still recovering. The _doctors_ wouldn’t let me out until my leg had healed at the very least.”

Illya’s snarl shouldn’t be reassuring to him, but it is. It’s so … _Illya_. He can imagine the scenario right now: Illya in bed in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters’ infirmary, his grace encumbered by bandages and casts, deflecting nurses and doctors and furiously demanding to be released so that he could jet off to England with the search party. Illya would have interspersed a multitude of Russian expletives in those demands too. Maybe lob a bedpan or two at the wall for good effect. What a sight for sore eyes that would have been!

“Mark Slate was there for months, along with Suzette Lanning and two more agents from Section II.”

It makes total sense to Napoleon that Mark had been in charge of the … pursuit. Aside from Illya, who’d been better to lead the hunt than his mentor? The man who’d taught him so much about the spying game and its thrills and perils –

“Wait,” Napoleon says, his brows furrowing with bafflement. “ _Suzette Lanning?_ ”

“Yes. She was very insistent about being involved in the search.”

Napoleon lowers his eyes from Illya’s to a distant spot beyond the window. Suzette Lanning … yeah, _Susie_ from Section IV. That’s what he’d called her instead of Suzette. He would tease her, to the delight of other female agents present, by warbling Dale Hawkins’ Susie Q whenever he walked into her department and saw her there and she’d _loved_ it. Loved it so much she had consented instantly to a dinner date with him at Maxwell’s Plum on First Avenue at 64 th Street when he finally asked her.

Then his last Affair took place.

And on the very night they should have dined on Iranian caviar and chateaubriand steak in a celebrity-habituated, four-star restaurant, with the potential for a different kind of feast later, he’d been in U.N.C.L.E.’s morgue instead. Flinched at the slam of the door against the wall, saw her storming in and mumbled her name – her _nickname_ – and something had snapped in her.

All her affection turned into hate, in a single moment.

“Andrew Lanning was …”

Napoleon’s throat constricts as a brief wave of nausea passes over him. Andrew Lanning had been the third to be wheeled into the morgue, and although Lanning hadn’t been caught in the fire, his demise had been equally grisly. A gigantic shard of glass, across and through the neck to the spine.

The medical examiner had attempted to console Napoleon by stating that death had been instantaneous. It didn’t work.

“I know,” Illya murmurs, giving his right hand a squeeze, and he is here once more, in a hotel room in New York City and not in Mr. Waverly’s grand office, rivulets of blood staining his lower face, neck and dress shirt. Mute and numb while Mr. Waverly cross-examined him in vain about the catastrophic Affair, about the injuries he sustained to his face that had not been there when he returned to headquarters from Pennsylvania with the corpses of his fallen agents and a comatose Illya.

He never said a word to Mr. Waverly about Susi– _Suzette_ beating him. Not one. Her reaction towards him had been very … reasonable.

“I was there in Mr. Waverly’s office when Ms. Lanning gave him a personal report of her _attack_ on your person.”

Napoleon fights the urge to shrug his shoulders. Yes, he’d anticipated that Suzette would do that sooner or later. Enraged as she’d been towards him over her brother’s untimely death, she must have had _lots_ to say about U.N.C.L.E. New York’s failure of a chief enforcement agent to Mr. Waverly, and Mr. Waverly must have agreed with all of it –

“She was very remorseful for her behavior towards you. It was unthinkable for an agent to physically assault the CEA like she did, even devastated as she was, and she realized that. At first, she had given Mr. Waverly a letter of resignation, but he rejected it. When she then volunteered to be part of the global search for you, he approved her participation based on her given motive.”

Napoleon gapes at Illya, his jaw sagging and his eyes wide.

“Remorseful?” he rasps, voice scratchy with incredulity.

“Yes, Napoleon. The reason she was so insistent on joining the search team was because she wished to apologize in person to you. For injuring you and venting her grief on you when you were not to blame. To find you and take you back to the fold, like we all wanted.”

Without being aware of it, Napoleon looks away from Illya and shakes his head slowly from side to side, his expression of shock transmuting into denial and confusion. No … _no_ , she wasn’t the one who had to apologize. It was him, _he_ was the one who had to, for giving the green light to the infiltration of the remote T.H.R.U.S.H. command center in the Pocono Mountains, for _killing_ them all and no, Illya’s wrong. There _was_ someone who didn’t want him to return to the fold.

“Mark Slate.”

Illya squeezes his hand again.

“What about him?”

“Mark found me in London,” he whispers, and with one blink, it is the arctic winter of 1972 in London, and he is in a dingy guesthouse, in a claustrophobic room with its rusty bed, crap heating, fissured mirror and tarnished sink. He’s shivering, tugging his trench coat tauter around his torso as he sits on the bed and counts his last quids and pennies in his hands.

He’ll be destitute very soon unless he goes on the prowl again. He has long depleted whatever money he could take with him from New York, from his bank accounts he drained over a few days so U.N.C.L.E. wouldn’t be alerted about it and pin a tail or two on him. Paid his airfare with cash and got on the next plane to London using a fake, non-U.N.C.L.E. passport, a late afternoon flight. Paid more cash for a cab upon passing Heathrow’s immigration check and rushing out of the airport like a bat out of hell. Paid even more cash for a room in a secluded inn far from any of the airports and U.N.C.L.E. London, and he’d stayed there for three fruitless days, dazed at his hair turning wholly grey-and-white within that time. Dazed at just what he’d done by leaving his gun, holster and U.N.C.L.E. ID on Mr. Waverly’s table when the man wasn’t there and walking away from Del Floria’s forever.

_Coward. Deserter. Murderer!_

Oh, yes, he is indeed all three.

And seven months later, after hopping from one guesthouse to another (while avoiding all U.N.C.L.E.-friendly ones), he is jobless yet again. He hasn’t fleshed out his new identity enough, hadn’t had the time to do so before leaving America, and he’s paying for it with dubious, erratic labor. The crooked kind. The kind where people are willing to turn a blind eye to lack of legal paperwork and authorization. The kind that eagerly backstabs a lone wolf and seizes anything and everything it can from him, and then some.

Oh, _yes_ , how far the great Napoleon Solo has fallen –

“ _NOOOOO!_ ”

His yell is deafening in the tiny room. His next words to himself are much quieter, tremulous: “No. You’re Albert Stroller now. _Albert_. _Stroller_.”

Albert Stroller, the thirty-nine-year-old American visitor without a past. The pickpocket, the grifter, the card cheat. _Thief_.

Albert Stroller, stalking the streets of London in an elegant suit and trench coat – the only ones he has left after selling the others out of necessity – and caught red-handed with his hand in the pocket of the last man in the world that he wishes to meet.

“Good god. It _is_ you.”

With his tweed flat cap fallen to the ground, an astonished Mark Slate’s shaggy blond hair is difficult to ignore beneath the flagrant illumination of the street lamp. It is even more difficult to ignore Mark’s hand around his right wrist, clamping more as he struggles to free himself, to get away, run, _run_ before the other agents get here and drag him _back there_ –

“Good god, _finally_.”

There is emotion in Mark’s voice, an emotion that rams into him like an arrow to the chest and infuriates him, and he slips into a British accent, his visage a rictus of panic and wrath when Mark grabs his other wrist.

“You leggo a’ me right now, you _bloody nutter_ –“

“ _What the_ – it’s me, _Mark!_ Don’t you recognize me?!”

“I _said_ let –“

“ _Listen_ to me! I don’t know what’s happened to you, but we can _help_ you! Christ, your _hair_ , it’s _not_ dyed, is it? And you look like you’re _starving_ –“

“Let _GO!_ ”

“Do you know how _long_ we’ve been searching for you?! How _many_ of us?! We thought you were –“

“ _Dead?_ Barbecued to _charcoal_ like _April?_ ” he growls, ditching the accent, glaring Mark in the eye, daring the man to _retaliate_.

Mark recoils from him. Lets go of his arms. Overwhelmed. _Shattered_ , and he runs as fast as he can, heedless of the pedestrians he barges against or of their annoyance, runs block after block until he collapses to his knees in front of a closed pharmacy, panting, his breast pocket fat with four wadded wallets from his night’s work. His vision hazy and hot, his chest brimming with repugnance towards himself.

It seems, in the four decades since, he hasn’t lost an ounce of that self-revulsion.

“I was a _ublyudok_ towards him, through and through,” Napoleon murmurs to Illya now, lips compressed into a thin line, eyes lowered. “I lashed out at him in the worst possible way.”

Although it was general gossip at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters that Mark and April had a strictly older brother/younger sister relationship, Napoleon and Illya, no one else, were privy to the actual fact that Mark had had a profound crush on the attractive, chestnut-haired agent for years. Illya had discovered Mark’s secret first, by way of a celebratory night of alcoholic drinks after an accomplished Affair for which they were temporarily partnered. Napoleon discovered it months later, also by way of a long queue of alcoholic drinks while they debated on the important things in life. Luckily they never got past defining ‘important’, much less defining those important things, or Mark might have been privy to his innermost secret too: That the women in his life were transient, convenient for slaking his lust and fortifying his Casanova reputation and nothing more, for he was madly in love with his taciturn, supremely intelligent, gorgeous Russian partner.

And _that_ hasn’t changed at all.

“I’m sure you had not meant it. You wanted him to leave you alone, and you were distressed,” Illya says gently. “Mark was not the only one hurting.”

Despite his lingering glumness, Napoleon shows the other man a small smile.

After Illya smiles in return, Illya’s expression segues into solemnity, and Napoleon asks, “What is it?”

Illya sighs heavily.

“As much as I’d felt sorry for him … I also know that Mark never reported finding you in London to Mr. Waverly. I didn’t know you were even alive until 1980.”

It is Napoleon’s turn to give Illya’s hand a squeeze of consolation. Eight years. Illya had thought him deceased for _eight years_ , just because Mark had decided to lie to U.N.C.L.E. about encountering him. Just because of one vicious, excessive line spat out in anguish.

One wrong line on a London street, one overturned card on a poker table, and the course of his history was diverted for the worse with no hope of doubling back.

A terrifying insight … but only if he stops playing the game and slinks away a loser. As long as he plays, the opportunity will always be there that he will win again. Win _big_. Win the _jackpot_ that’ll set him up for life with everything he desires in it.

Everything, encapsulated in the bespectacled, bow tied, blond and blue-eyed man sitting next to him.

For him, after a lifetime of playing against the odds on every level conceivable, there can be no grander reward.

“He should be glad he’s dead,” Illya mutters to himself. Illya’s scowl is back, the groove between his eyebrows deeper.

“Mark’s dead?”

Illya nods and replies, “Bullet to the gut. Pakistan. 1980.”

Napoleon’s eyes narrow in contemplation. Huh. What are the chances that the year Mark died and the year Illya learned of his continued existence being the same is just a coincidence?

“Mark told you.”

Illya nods a second time.

“On his dying breath. Mark resigned from U.N.C.L.E. in 1973. He worked for the C.I.A. from then on as an undercover agent in the Middle East. I had no idea about it when I went there as well in 1980, as Dr. Mallard. I didn’t know either exactly how he knew I was there or where to find me. I still don’t, actually. He sent a Pakistani man for me, an ally of his, who told me that Mark had been shot by a terrorist and was dying from his injuries, and that Mark was … vehement about seeing me before it was too late. The only reason, though, that I crossed the border with the Pakistani man was because Mark had claimed he had _recent_ news about you.” Illya’s lips twist upwards in a bleak smile. “Who would have thought it was a _confession_ that he actually wanted to impart to me?”

“Mark told you about London.”

“Yes. And that you were still alive. That he had reliable info that you frequented Las Vegas. He died before he could tell me more. I couldn’t save him.”

A pall of darkness suddenly envelopes Illya like a cloud.

“I was …” Illya coughs, then says in a more steady tone, “I was in Afghanistan in 1980 as part of the Royal Army Medical Corp, during the Soviet invasion. In the Jalozai refugee camp on the Pakistani border.”

Illya’s grip around Napoleon’s right hand is becoming painful, but he doesn’t comment on it. Whatever it is Illya is about to tell him, it’s visibly grueling for Illya. Illya is staring out the window now, eyes wide. Haunted.

“During my time in the camp, I used to play chess regularly with another C.I.A. agent. A … _man_ called Marcin Jerek.” Illya spits out the name like a revolting obscenity. “He called himself Mr. Pain. An _ironic_ twist, since he couldn’t feel any pain himself due to old injuries of his own. At the time, I was unaware that he’d been torturing Afghan refugees who were suspected of espionage and leaking intel on troop movements. In ways that even you and I had never experienced.”

Napoleon pats Illya’s hand. T.H.R.U.S.H. sure had a frightening fixation with mistreating him and Illya in the ‘60s, be it psychologically or physically or both. They’d been shot at more times than they could count, been actually shot more times than they liked, been tied up with ropes and chains, threatened with scalding fireplace pokers, gassed or darted into unconsciousness every other day, imprisoned, whipped, punched, kicked, knocked out with a blow to the head or neck, brainwashed, mentally regressed, _electrocuted_ … damn, the list just goes _on_. If he starts recalling _all_ of it, he’s going to need a glass of very dry martini. Or ten.

So what could have occurred to Illya that’s _worse_ than what T.H.R.U.S.H. had already put them through?

“If T.H.R.U.S.H. had still been in power then, they would have been _proud_ to have him as one of their own. He had no remorse for what he was doing. _None_.” Illya pauses, for a long time, then rasps, “I only found out about the torture when an Afghan man called Javid repeatedly came to me with terrible wounds. And even then, he continued with the _cruelty_ and he – _I_ …”

Napoleon sees the Adam’s apple of Illya’s throat bob as Illya swallows hard.

“I could not stand by and allow Javid to be slowly _brutalized_ to death. I _couldn’t_.”

“Illya –“

Illya sits ramrod straight, his face blank and his voice as devoid of emotion as he says, “I injected Javid with a lethal dose of morphine. I did the same with many other prisoners who were also being tortured by Jerek. I killed an innocent man. Innocent _men_. On my own volition, my _choice_ , I looked them all in the eye and _killed_ them in cold blood.”

The ensuing silence is stifling, dense as the murkiest depths of an ocean, leaving Napoleon bereft of breath and declarations. Illya has become as rigid and stationary as a statue, staring without blinking out the window. Staring with glistening blue eyes that burn with something with which Napoleon is all too acquainted.

_Well, well, take a look at this bloke. A chief medical examiner in the Navy, accused of war crimes in the Middle East!_

He’s gazing at Illya’s profile, but what he sees and hears is another man in front of him, a much younger man with unruly, short hair as blond as Illya’s had once been and eyes as bright and blue. Danny, one of his most gifted protégés from London. Danny Blue.

“What do you think, Albert?” Danny asks him, and he is back in Danny’s luxurious apartment over a thousand miles away in Miami, Florida, two months ago. He’s seated on a plush, leather couch, a glass of Scotch in hand after a divine dinner of seafood ravioli and veal scaloppini, while Danny is lounging on another couch, an open laptop on his belly. Stacie – Stacie Monroe, another protégé, as lovely and sweet as ever – sits on marble floor less than a foot away from him to his left, engrossed with her own open laptop on a glass-and-steel coffee table, skimming through dozens of websites and twirling a tress of her long, dark hair between her fingers.

“Send me the URL. I’ll check him out too,” Stacie says to Danny without glancing up. Seconds later, Napoleon hears a trill signaling the arrival of an email, and he watches Stacie open the email and click on the link attached.

He doesn’t hear his glass of Scotch smashing to smithereens on the floor after it plummets from his fingers gone lax from bewilderment.

“Albie?”

He doesn’t sense Stacie’s hand on his knee either, or hear her calling his name a second time. He’s gawking at the color photograph that has loaded on the LCD screen of Stacie’s laptop, at the arresting portrait of a face he’d seen only in his dreams for the past four decades, a face that had once been as integral to his self as his own.

“ _Albert?_ Okay, mate, you’re starting to _scare_ us a bit here.”

Danny has come around to sit beside him, one hand on his left shoulder, frowning with concern. He attempts to speak, to rip his eyes away from the portrait of the bespectacled, bow tied, blond man, but moves soundless lips, his head frozen in place.

“Do you know him, Albie?” Stacie says, clasping his left hand on his left thigh.

It is her touch that liberates him from the pictured man’s agonizingly unforgettable eyes. He swivels his head towards them, still speechless.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Danny says, and then, what Napoleon sees once more is Illya next to him on the side of a hotel bed, still staring out the window with glistening eyes. Illya, a ghost from his past. A ghost with so many ghosts of his own, too.

Yes, a chief medical examiner in the Navy, accused of war crimes in the Middle East … and ultimately found to be innocent. Stacie had checked Dr. Donald Mallard out anyway in spite of Napoleon’s adamance that neither she or Danny were to do any further research on him, that he was _off limits_. The verdict of innocence was the one reason Stacie had, after several heated though well-meant debates with him and Danny about him meeting Dr. Mallard alone, assented to him being anywhere near the guy. Bless her heart, she’d then purchased the tickets for all his trips – twice to Washington, D.C., then here to New York City – in spite of his protests. First class, every time.

Stacie had informed him about Dr. Mallard being in Afghanistan in the ‘80s, that the Afghani government had intended to investigate Dr. Mallard on charges of war crimes and apprehended the truly guilty party instead. But this premeditated, fatal overdosing of innocent C.I.A. prisoners with morphine? _Multiple_ times?

Even if Stacie _had_ acquired such information and blared it straight into his ears twenty-four hours non-stop with a megaphone, it wouldn’t have lessened the metaphoric kick in the teeth upon hearing Illya confessing it in person to him. Not in the slightest.

“So. What do you think of me now, Napoleon?”

Illya’s tone is mild. Too mild to be natural. Illya has yet to shift a muscle.

Illya’s hand has yet to let go of his.

And, his own eyes glistening, he now sees an Illya over twenty years younger, an Illya older than the U.N.C.L.E. partner that he remembers. An Illya with longer hair, a more creased visage. Darker eyes, eclipsed by the sorrows of war, that have gone red and damp as an innocuous-looking needle is inserted into the bulging arm vein of a young, suffering Afghan man reclined on a stretcher.

_Mne zhalʹ ... Mne ochenʹ zhalʹ …_

Would the Afghan man have heard Illya’s whispered plea for forgiveness, riding high on the last wave of ecstasy before fragmenting into nothing on the shore of death? Would Illya himself have heard it, knowing that that very first press of the syringe’s plunger would alter the course of his history forever?

Napoleon hopes, with all he has, that Illya will hear _his_ plea.

“Illya, you were trying to _save_ them,” he murmurs, his voice hoarse, and Illya rouses from the self-imposed paralysis, little by little. Illya’s head droops forward, chin almost grazing chest. Illya blinks a few times, rapidly, and then he sucks in a shuddering breath, as if he’d been on the verge of drowning but has broken the surface of the waters to precious air.

“Yes. I was.”

Napoleon can tell that the three words were far from easy for Illya to verbalize. They seem to have been scoured up from deep within Illya, from a place where Illya stores under lock and key many other things that he doesn’t want crawling into the light. Like the reassurances of his friends, his _loved ones_ , that he has been forgiven. Like their enduring faith in him. That, despite what transpired, he is still cared for and accepted without reservation.

_Sure you aren’t just projecting yourself onto him, old man?_

Before he can respond to that snide inner voice of his, he notices that Illya has raised his head and is gazing at him again, those sad blue eyes filled with that radiating, _dangerous_ light again.

“So were you, Napoleon. So were you,” Illya says, very softly.

To Napoleon, Illya might as well have roared as loud as a maddened deity. He feels sucker-punched, a direct wallop to his chest – no, even deeper, hurtling on an unerring path to that place inside him where he stores under many locks and keys many, _many_ other things that he doesn’t want crawling into the light –

_Oh god, oh my god, we can’t break it! Even our incendiary bombs can’t! Nothing WORKS!_  

April, oh April, she’d begun screaming in frustration when their guns and bombs hadn’t left a single scratch on the impenetrable, transparent walls that separated them from the civilians trapped in the gargantuan, airtight cell –

_There MUST be a door! How could they have sealed those people in there?!_

And Lanning, Cruzo, Taxali and Mitchell had flung everything not bolted down to the floor at the transparent walls. Chairs, tables, various scientific paraphernalia, even the _file cabinets_ –

_What about the TNT?!_

_Are you insane?! The blast would KILL them! And US!_

_If we don’t DO something right now, they’ll die anyway!_

_Solo, what do we do?!_

And Illya, standing so loyally at his side, had said nothing as the other frantic U.N.C.L.E. agents awaited his command, and he knew that whatever he decided, Illya would back it and oh _Jesus_ , there had been _children_ trapped in there, banging noiselessly on the walls, their mouths open in mute screams, their faces scrunched up with outright _terror_ –

“Oh, Napoleon.”

Somehow, there is now two feet of icy space between them, Illya seated at the same place on the side of the bed while he is flattened against the headboard in the shadows, his lower legs wedged in the corner between the bed and bedside table. He can hear someone breathing fast and shallow, someone scared like _hell_. Half of him itches to give solace to this person, to tell them that it’s alright, that everything’s going to be _okay_. The other half is too occupied to do anything except drone a mantra nearly a half-century old:

_My name is Albert Stroller. I was a shoe salesman in the Midwest in the late ‘60s until the workforce was laid off. After conning the company out of sixty-thousand dollars and splitting the money among my former co-workers, I enjoyed the experience so much that I became a grifter and moved to Las Vegas. I lived there until 1972 when I left the United States for England. My name is Albert Stroller. I was a shoe salesman in the Midwest in the late –_

“You still blame yourself for what happened. Don’t you?”

The sunlight streaming in through the window has spread upwards, swathing Illya from head to toe in warmth and brilliance, glinting off Illya’s spectacles. It almost hurts Napoleon’s eyes to look at Illya, like the other man has abruptly transmogrified into an ethereal being too exquisite for his sinful regard. Like an angel. His guardian angel, who’d laid down his life for him, again and again.

Doesn’t the Good Book say that there’s no greater love one has than he who lays down his life for his friend?

That there is no fear in love?

Napoleon’s breath stutters, stops, held in to prevent what he suspects will become a sob from leaving his throat. After a minute – or perhaps a century, or even a millennia – another old mantra gurgles up in its place, spilling from his dry mouth as a gravelly whisper.

“Seven U.N.C.L.E. agents are dead because of me.”

The angel before him doesn’t bellow a curse at him, nor slash him dead with a fiery sword. There is kindness, only kindness, in the large blue eyes that behold him.

“Seven billion people are alive today because of you.”

Napoleon has to rein in a self-deprecating snort. He doesn’t recall whether the Good Book says anything about angels – the _good_ ones – being capable of dishonesty, but that’s a _lie_ if he’s ever heard one.

“Bullshit,” he grinds out, still no louder than a whisper.

Illya stretches out one hand towards him, and he leaps from the bed and finds himself standing behind the cushioned chair that Illya had sat in earlier, veiled in the shadows of the curtains, his arms crossed over his constricted chest. He’s safe here in the dark. He’s safe here in the dark where there are no explosions, no flames and smoke, no _screams_ of agony and he’s Albert Stroller, _damnit_ , just a shoe salesman in the Midwest, _Albert Stroller_ , just a shoe salesman in the Midwest and _stop it, Illya, don’t make me_ _remember_ –

“Napoleon, what happened in the Pocono Mountains was _not_ your fault,” Illya says, steadfastly, but it sounds so far away, so _distorted_ by the deafening discharge of their last incendiary bomb against one of the cell’s invincible walls and April is yelling at the others to try using their Specials again and there’s that vexatious, nasally voice booming from the command center’s P.A. system, gloating and _driveling_ and so fucking _typical_ of a T.H.R.U.S.H. official.

“Ladies and gentlemen of U.N.C.L.E., it is my utmost pleasure to inform you that this installation has been set to self-destruct in precisely _six_ minutes. I can assure you that you will fail to free the prisoners as the _extraordinary_ structure of their cell is resistant to _every_ weapon in your arsenal, as you’ve probably figured out by now …”

The malicious snicker that follows contorts Napoleon’s soot-smudged features into a severe scowl. Illya appears as pissed off as he is, glaring at the black speaker mounted on one wall of the vast chamber they’re in.

“Today, you’re going to learn how the _real_ world works. You may have won the _battles_ , but you will surely lose the _war_ …”

“ _Chush' sobach'ya!_ ” Illya snarls, and Napoleon grasps his partner’s shoulder, acutely aware of the other U.N.C.L.E. agents standing with them, listening to the recorded broadcast with livid scowls of their own.

“There are fifty people, including twelve children below the age of ten, in that cell. The choice is yours whether you _die_ with them, or _abandon_ them …”

“Napoleon,” April murmurs, her big brown eyes overflowing and wide, teeth sunk into her lower lip. He wraps one arm around her shoulders, needing the support as much as she does. As CEA, the final decision will be his. In mere minutes, he will be dealing a hand that will change _all_ of their fates, one way or another.

“Either way, you _will_ learn that in the real world, the villains _always_ win.”

The broadcast concludes with a high-pitched crackle. From the corner of his eye, Napoleon can see the fifty innocents inside their transparent cell. Some of them are curled up on the floor in defeat, some of them huddled in groups, some of them thumping on the walls with fists, their screams and all other noise within suppressed by the unknown material of the walls. One of the twelve children, a little, brunette girl in a yellow dress and brown shoes, is standing with her small hands pressed against the wall, staring in their direction with forlorn eyes, eerily unperturbed by the panicked adults around her.

“Four minutes.”

It’s Mitchell, a tall, lanky redhead from New Jersey, who quietly says this while glancing down at his watch on his left wrist. The other agents gaze at Napoleon, their expressions somber and yet so full of faith. Faith in _him_. April’s arms have enfolded themselves around his torso, her head upon his chest. Her shoulders quaver, her subdued tears dampening his dress shirt, her breath hitching from foreknowledge. When he glances at Illya, he finds Illya gazing back at him, expressionless, wordless save for the message Illya’s eyes are conveying to him.

_Whatever you decide, I am with you._

Napoleon glances next at the gargantuan cell, beyond Illya’s shoulder. He grits his teeth, his chest aching, his throat closing up as his eyes land on the little girl again. She can’t be more than five years old. Just a child who has scarcely begun to experience all that the world has to offer, to _live_. Just a _baby_.

A baby he is about to sentence to death.

“Leave. Now,” he grates, his arms fallen to his sides, hands clenched into fists.

Lanning, Taxali, Mitchell and Cruzo dash past him, Illya and April for the exit without a glance back. Napoleon doesn’t fault them for it, for he knows they are simply following orders, for they will carry the moment, the _enormity_ with them to their graves. Like he will.

“We’re sorry. We’re so _sorry_.”

He doesn’t know if it was he who said it, or if it was April, with tears now trickling unashamedly down her cheeks, who did. He doesn’t feel April’s hand brushing his arm or hear April departing the chamber as well. What he does feel, as he stares into the round, green eyes of the little girl, is Illya’s hand on his shoulder, grounding him, keeping him from flying apart into a million slivers.

“Napoleon. We must go,” he hears Illya say into his ear, and then, they’re sprinting down numerous corridors and metal staircases, panting, catching up fast with April and the other agents as they approach the main entry they’d used to break into the command center. One blast from Lanning’s Special at the entry’s control panel short-circuits the entry’s massive, steel doors. They slide open, letting in a frosty gust of mountain air that washes over the agents and raises goose bumps all over Napoleon’s skin.

Outside, the midday sunshine is obscenely vivid, highlighting verdant forests and grassland with tints of orange and yellow, producing the illusion of a tranquil holiday vista. Napoleon sees none of this as he hurries along the winding, tarred path leading downhill and away from the command center, his agents in front of him, Illya beside him. Any minute now, _any_ minute now the whole place is going to blow sky high and if they aren’t far away enough, they’ll –

“It’s Tsang and Malhotra! They’re _dead!_ ”

Napoleon will never know who it was who’d shouted. The very first explosion isn’t inside the command center, but less than eighty feet away from them to their right. Its earsplitting boom seems to go on for an eternity. Time and movement seem to decelerate to an abnormal stillness before Napoleon’s eyes, to elongate and yet sharpen with incredible clarity.

The corpses of Tsang and Malhotra, two old-timer agents from Section III, soar into the air towards them in a nauseating dance of flailing, mangled limbs, lightless as birds. The bloody grins of their sliced necks are the markers of their true demise, of their ambush by T.H.R.U.S.H. agents early in the mission. Taxali and Cruzo, closest to the blast, also soar through the air, their heads snapping back and their spines arching, their internal organs battered. Lanning, Mitchell and April, who’d been to their left and are blocked from the blast, are tossed off their feet and onto the ground, April cushioned by Mitchell and Lanning landing on his side and spinning across the grass before halting facedown.

Deafened, Napoleon sees Illya’s mouth moving rather than hear Illya’s yell at him. Even as he himself is sailing backwards through the air, his breath stolen from him, he senses Illya barreling into him, sheltering him from the force of the detonation, shoving him down the hill and oh fuck, he’s rolling, rolling over and over and he can’t stop, he can’t _see_ anything except the blue sky and the green grass, over and _over_ , and the ground is shaking again and _again_ and oh _fuck_ , the command center’s started self-destructing and Illya, where the fuck is _Illya?!_

His breaths pump in and out of his lungs like bellows but he can’t hear them. The side of his face is being stung by blades of grass, and so are his hands and he’s stopped rolling, he’s lying on the grass now and the sky isn’t blue anymore. It’s dark grey and black, heaven vanquished by the smoke and fires of hell.

He screams Illya’s name and doesn’t hear it. He staggers to his feet only to stumble to his knees as another bomb explodes in the distance, higher up the hill. He doesn’t hear it either. He staggers a second time to his feet and then scurries back up to the tarred path, tripping twice from vertigo and disorientation. Illya … he has to find Illya and they have to get out of here, before _more_ bombs go off!

He is greeted by Lanning’s corpse straggling the path, a gigantic shard of glass almost decapitating the poor bastard. Lanning’s brown eyes are open, staring up at the sky as if beseeching, for the last time, what his purpose for existence had been. Choking on bile, Napoleon lurches past Lanning, past Taxali, Cruzo and Mitchell whose eyes will never again see either, past wreckage and muck littering the once immaculate grass. When he looks further up the path, he sees Illya tottering towards April who’s kneeling and vomiting on the ground thirty feet away from Illya, and he rushes towards them and screams Illya’s name another time, his entire soul vibrating with fear for his partner.

Illya never reaches April. Another bomb discharges a dozen feet away from April, smothering her in flames, hurling Illya even farther up into the air than before, back onto the path and suddenly, suddenly Napoleon is able to hear again and the crack of Illya’s head against tarmac is louder than the echoes of a supernova.

“No … No. _No_. No, no, no, _no_.”

Illya’s blood is black as it pools underneath Illya’s head, saturating Illya’s blond hair with viscous crimson. Illya’s left collarbone is fractured, lower left leg wrenched outward at an unnatural angle, and Illya’s eyes are half open and oh god, ohgod _ohgod_ , Illya isn’t responding to his touches and now he can hear somebody weeping, sounding so much like him. Illya’s blood coats his fingers as he strokes Illya’s hair at the temples. Translucent droplets spatter on Illya’s pallid cheeks, their source a mystery to Napoleon. The weeping pauses as Illya’s eyes roll up then shut, but seconds later, it recommences, intermingled with strangling gasps and a crushed voice rasping, “No … _no_ , Illyusha, damn you … _don’t_ you _die_ on me, you _hear_ me … _no_ … _don’t leave me_ …”

Yet another explosion, much farther away, emanating from the incinerating ruins of the command center, and flaming debris showers down upon them. Something solid and red-hot strikes Napoleon’s left shoulder and arm, but he doesn’t budge from his protective crouch over his partner, his forehead touching Illya’s, his own cheeks wet. He doesn’t flinch at the pain. He’s not going anywhere, no, not without Illya, not without his partner, his friend, the best friend he’s ever had, his _everything_ –

A horrifying shriek rends the air, and then another, and another, and Napoleon jerks his head up to see an upright figure ablaze from head to toe, reeling like a disjointed puppet across the grass. Every discernible physical feature apart from its humanoid shape has been razed by the fire devouring it and it takes Napoleon eons to realize that, good god almighty, it’s _April_ , charming, caring April burning to a crisp before his eyes and _screaming_ like that and – and _ohgodohgodohgod_ , all the innocents trapped inside are dead too, _everyone’s DEAD_ –

“Napoleon, what happened was _not_ _your fault_.”

Illya’s voice is calm. Strong. _Real_.

Napoleon blinks several times, trying to clear his obstinately blurry sight. No … not everyone died that day. He didn’t. _Illya_ didn’t.

Illya’s right here, right now, with him. Standing at the side of the bed in this hotel room in New York City, still swathed in sunshine. Still as beatific as ever, unmarked by the past forty decades in all the ways that matter.

“Fifty people,” he whispers, backing into the curtains, unintentionally drawing them to the side and permitting more sunlight to pour into the room. Pour over him. “Twelve of them _children_.”

Illya says nothing, but Napoleon doesn’t expect the other man to as it is 1972 once more and it has been four days since the disaster in Pennsylvania. Illya isn’t there with him. Illya is in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters’ infirmary, hooked up to a plethora of life-extending equipment, cataleptic, and he is plodding down the hallway towards Mr. Waverly’s office. He hasn’t shaved in days. Hasn’t changed his suit in as many days, hasn’t eaten or drunk anything except water and he can’t recollect the last time he took a shower and he doesn’t give two fucks about it. Doesn’t give two fucks about everyone staring at him either as they halt in their tracks and step aside for him to go by.

Let them stare all they want. He doesn’t have to look at them, at any of them, to know what they’re thinking about him. Let them _despise_ him all they want.

“You can’t have it, Napoleon.”

Lisa Rogers, Mr. Waverly’s secretary, is standing in front of her desk, between him and a nondescript, brown folder on said desk. He glares at her, _through_ her, as if doing so for long enough will enable him to peruse its contents.

“Direct orders from Mr. Waverly. You _can’t_ have the list.”

There is a slight tremor in her voice. She takes a step back when he steps forward, looming over her.

“Give it to me,” he says, very distinctly, very coolly, and trepidation flashes across her ascetic features. She takes another step back, two, and she bumps against her desk, her right hand slithering behind her while their glares stay locked. She’s likely reaching for her handbag, for the plastic flask in it that’ll spray a gas designed to curb a person’s aggressive instincts. _His_ aggressive instincts.

But this time, it may just _not_ work.

“I’m sorry, Napoleon, but I _can’t_.” A fissure appears in Lisa’s veneer, as the infinitesimal quiver of her lips and the flickering of her eyelids. “Mr. Waverly’s orders are for _your_ sake, don’t you underst–“

“ _GIVE IT TO ME!_ ”

Lisa is so alarmed by his reverberating roar that she gasps stridently, her visage ashen. She backs away from him as he stomps to the desk and snatches the folder with his right hand, and if he had glanced at her then instead of hurrying back to the isolation of his office, he would have seen the glistening of her eyes. The aborted, condoling gesture of her hand towards him. He would have seen, too, the same sympathy in the eyes of other U.N.C.L.E. agents he passes in the hallways if he’d glanced at them, but he doesn’t and he is alone, all alone in his office and the folder is open on his desk, his gravest sin laid bare for the gods and angels to rebuke.

A day after the disaster, while he and Illya were still in a hospital in Pennsylvania and members of Section VIII were in the Pocono Mountains gathering as much evidence as they could, T.H.R.U.S.H. had mailed a letter to Del Floria’s. The letter contained two documents, one a typed note offensively written in a manner one would to a dear friend, and the other a numbered list of names. Fifty names. The names of every person who’d been slaughtered in the T.H.R.U.S.H. command center, alongside their places of birth and ages.

Napoleon reads the typed letter first. His mind, enfeebled by trauma and lack of food, is incapable of making sense of it. Of its disgusting, false camaraderie as it describes in lurid detail how T.H.R.U.S.H. had so effortlessly kidnapped the fifty innocents across the country from under U.N.C.L.E.’s nose, how _frightened_ they’d all been – particularly the _children_ – as T.H.R.U.S.H. sealed them in a cell constructed from one of their latest engineering marvels, a transparent material lighter than air but a thousand times tougher than the sturdiest metal known to man and _oh_ , didn’t U.N.C.L.E. _know?_ That it can be immediately dissolved to a harmless goop with a very specific acid? An acid that had been _helpfully_ stored in four bulky canisters in the floor of the chamber where the _guests_ were held?

Cemented over, of course, but it wouldn’t have been a _challenge_ otherwise, would it?

The letter in Napoleon’s trembling hands is a photocopy of the original. He rips it to shreds anyway, his grief-knotted face colorless, his stomach churning, chilled to the marrow and sweating at the same time. The bastards. The _fucking bastards_. Fifty innocent people _dead_ , and for what? Some _sick_ game of come-uppance?

_Either way, you will learn that in the real world, the villains always win._

“No. Fuck you, no, you don’t. _No_ ,” he whispers as a reply, his hands fisted on the desk.

His rage swerves inwards at himself, gradually, inevitably, as he reads and memorizes each and every name on the list, memorizes the diverse faces attached to those names via photographs clipped together in the folder. Within the first twenty-four hours of receiving the letter from T.H.R.U.S.H., Section IV matched and verified all the names to their respective possessors, an impressive feat considering T.H.R.U.S.H. was generous enough to only supply the names of states, not cities or towns. No one in the department had complained about working those twenty-four hours in a row, and Napoleon ought to know. He’d overheard two Section IV agents conversing about it yesterday, about the terrible tragedy, that seven of their own were killed, that poor Suzette was absolutely inconsolable over her brother’s demise and that only _one_ agent had walked out of the situation on his own two feet:

_How the hell’s it possible that he’s the only one who wasn’t hurt badly? Solo’s Luck at work again, or what?_

_Solo’s Cowardice, more like._

_Jeez, what brought that on –_

_You heard what Suzy said. She saw him in the morgue, looking guilty as sin. And remember what Jimmy said? After he took Suzy home, he went back to the morgue and Solo was still there with all the – the BODIES. For HOURS!_

_So? That doesn’t prove anything. The guy’s been through hell. Literally!_

_And they’re ALL dead except him and Kuryakin, and he barely has a scratch on him. Think about it. Who’s gonna tell on him if he ran away and left them behind till everything blew over?_

_That’s not even funny, man. Not funny at all –_

_Who says I’m joking? You try explaining why he’s okay and why Kuryakin’s in the ICU. The docs say Kuryakin will probably be a vegetable for life._

_I don’t know … I don’t know. I just know Solo’s the head of Section II for good reason. Mr. Waverly wouldn’t put a fraidy-cat at the top. I’m sure you heard the talk about Solo being the future –_

_Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Me, I think Solo’s jig is up. All he does is fuck anything wearing a skirt and waste company money on his pricey, tailored suits. Maybe the boss likes Solo so much ‘cause Solo lets him fu–_

_You keep that damn thought to yourself, man. Seriously. I don’t want to hear it._

_Fine, fine. You mark my words, though. Solo will never become head of Section I._

In another time, in another world in which Illya isn’t comatose and dangling between life and the afterlife, Napoleon might have stepped out into the hallway and smashed his fist into the big-mouthed asshole’s face. Not for the bitter, petty, _ridiculous_ jibes of jealousy, but for _daring_ to utter aloud the petrifying prospect of Illya being a damn _vegetable_ for the rest of his life. A fate worse than death, Illya had once said.

_If I should ever become permanently crippled, Napoleon, have mercy on me and put a bullet in my head._

And if _he_ is the reason Illya is crippled? Would Illya wish that he put a bullet into his own head next?

He has the premonition that, with the blood of fifty innocents and seven U.N.C.L.E. agents on his hands, Illya’s answer will be yes.

Napoleon finds the weight of his gun on his left flank to be both boon and bane. The more photographs of faces he sees, the more he visualizes himself removing the weapon from its holster and thrusting the end of the barrel against his right temple. One tug of the trigger. That’s all it’ll take. One tug of the trigger, and his brains will bespatter his desk and wall and justice will be served. _One_ tug –

His mind empties upon laying raw eyes on the color portrait of a little girl with her dark brown hair in ponytails high on her head. A little girl with large green eyes, wearing a ruffled, white dress and a pink ribbon at the collar. Smiling at the camera. He stares into her eyes for a very, very long time, his forearms on the desk framing the portrait, harboring all that’s left of her. He is mystified by the materialization of those translucent droplets again, minuscule globules that randomly blotch and darken the photograph.He wipes them away as hastily as they fall, and when he rubs one hand across his face, he feels those droplets there too, as streams that sear trails down to his jawline.

A child killer. A goddamn _child killer_ , that’s what he is.

“Her name was Rosie Kendall.”

The table in front of him now is round and petite, so unlike his rectangular, hefty desk in his U.N.C.L.E. office where he’d sat till nightfall that day before trudging back to the infirmary to sit at Illya’s bedside, his exhausted body wracked with sobs as he’d committed to memory the names and smiling countenances of the twelve children. The oldest had been nine years old, while the youngest …

“She was _four years old_. And I left her to _die_.”

Illya has taken one or two steps towards him, though still too far away for physical contact. His eyes, his damn old eyes just won’t _clear_ , no matter how much he blinks, and Illya seems more luminous than ever in the sunlight, a saintly form too sublime for his pitiful vision.

“We did the best we could. Especially you.”

Napoleon shakes his head, leaning against the window, its glass warm against his back. The air is thickening, congealing, becoming as unbreathable as noxious fumes and his heart is hammering and it’s getting more and more _difficult_ to inhale any oxygen into his lungs.

Is he _dying?_

“If I … if I hadn’t given the _go_ on the infiltration, if we hadn’t gone inside that command center –“

“Napoleon –“

“If we – we’d _stayed_ a little longer, if we’d just searched _harder_ for the acid, maybe we would have _found_ it and maybe we would have freed them all and _saved_ them, but they’re _dead_ , because of _me_ –“

“Napoleon, that’s _not_ true, and you _know_ it. We had no _idea_ about T.H.R.U.S.H.’s true plans when we infiltrated the place!” Illya says, taking another step nearer, and Napoleon’s breaths quicken. “If those T.H.R.U.S.H. agents we fought with after breaking in had not told us about the chamber and the trapped civilians, we might have _never_ known about it, or about the command center’s impending self-destruction! And if we’d remained inside, we would _all_ be dead! Including you and I!”

“ _No_ –“

“You couldn’t possibly have known that the acid was hidden in the floor. That there were more bombs outside. You couldn’t _possibly_ have known what would happen to April and Lanning, to Cruzo, Taxali, Mitchell, Tsang and Malhotra!”

Something inside Napoleon splinters.

“But I should have. I _should_ have, don’t you _understand?!_ I was CEA! It was _my_ duty to lead them, to _protect_ them and _I FAILED THEM!_ ”

Anyone else would have been scared stiff by the volume and fury of his voice, by his hissing breaths, his raised fists, but Illya does not even blink or cower from him, and as swift as it’d consumed him, his ire drains away from his wilting body, leaving behind space. Too much space, a void soon flooded by stark memories as he stares at Illya’s face and sees a version four decades younger, a sallow, blood-splashed version that he had caressed with shaky fingers as the rescue helicopter in which they were ensconced zoomed at top speed to the Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton. Illya’s cheeks were cold to his touch, even colder after the hours of emergency surgery and Napoleon relentlessly pacing the floor of the waiting room, worrying the other visitors with his bloodstained face, hands and clothes and his monotonous rambling to himself. Colder still, when their U.N.C.L.E. private jet finally landed at JFK and Illya was examined at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters by doctors who gave him the most dismal of prognoses.

_Our tomographic scanners have shown more cerebral hemorrhaging in the right side of Mr. Kuryakin’s brain. We’re doing our best to reduce the intracranial pressure with drugs, and we’re hopeful that the swelling will go down within the next twelve hours. However, Mr. Kuryakin has suffered several seizures. The risk of brain damage is … high. If he – Until he awakens from the coma, we cannot accurately assess how severe the damage will be. If he has family, it may be a good time to contact them. I’m sorry, Mr. Solo_.

He had collapsed on the chair next to Illya’s bed after they left, indifferent to Mr. Waverly entering the room later and standing silently beside him, to Mr. Waverly’s hand giving his shoulder one squeeze. He’d become indifferent to everyone and everything with each passing day, knowing that Mr. Waverly’s brief display of consideration was just a precursor to the next interrogation to learn how much he’d fucked up, to reprimand him accordingly. Knowing that Illya was likely going to die or at best be disabled for life, _because of him_ , and by the time Illya actually woke up, enough to demonstrate full defiance of the prognosis … he was no longer there.

He’d done what that Section IV agent had accused him of doing. He’d done the unthinkable.

He had forsaken Illya. He had –

“Failed you … I failed _you_ ,” Napoleon murmurs, and an emancipated torrent of emotions gushes up his throat, emotions that has had decades to burgeon in the darkness within, compacted for so long that they now pervade him to the very tips of his extremities. The first one he acknowledges – the only one – is shame, deep-seated shame that compels him to pivot away from Illya and blindly face the window. He’s a damn coward, alright, a _damned_ old coward ready at last for his due punishment and _come on, Illya, what are you waiting for, chop me down already, finish me, give me what I DESERVE, goddamnit –_

He jolts when he senses Illya’s hands on his upper arms. Resists being turned around. Tenses when the hands release him an instant later … and feels small, so small and _unworthy_ , when Illya’s arms hug him snugly from behind, when Illya’s chin leans on his shoulder and Illya’s cheek nestles his neck. It is a good thing, then, that the sunshine has rendered the window’s glass less reflective for he isn’t certain the frail remnants of his pride can handle Illya noting his deluged, reddened eyes.

“You’re not a god, Napoleon. None of us are. How does any man on this earth know what the future holds for him, for anyone?” Illya’s voice is gentle. Earnest. “When we were still U.N.C.L.E. agents, it was always drilled into our heads that we were _expendable_. That _anything_ could happen, regardless of our skills and our preparations for each and every Affair, be it good fortune or the worst of luck. With the intel we had at the time, you made the _right_ call. Somewhere inside you, you know this. Mr. Waverly knew this. We _all_ knew this.”

Napoleon is amazed that he can even speak, even as he whispers, “My decision killed fifty innocent people and seven U.N.C.L.E. agents, and I’m still alive. How is it _right?_ ”

Illya’s embrace around his torso tightens.

“It was not you who murdered them. It was T.H.R.U.S.H. who did. _Not you_. We did _everything_ in our power to free them, and our failure to do so does _not_ make us responsible for their deaths. It simply makes us … flawed. _Human_. Sometimes, the unwilling pawns of grand schemes far beyond our control.” Illya sighs, a sound heavy with empathy. “We will drown in all the maybes and what ifs, my friend, if we never let them go. There is no sin in surviving what others didn’t. No sin in having happiness in your life again.”

For many minutes, a hush reigns over them as they stare out the window at the distinguished city skyline, more so over Napoleon whose mind is striving to accept, to _believe_ in Illya’s assertions. Lies upon lies and all manners of ploys of his design definitely haven’t bestowed him with absolution. So what about _truth?_ Has he been fleeing, all this time, from the very thing that is his _deliverance?_

“I was awake and talking one week after the incident. The doctors told me it was nothing short of a miracle that I could even speak or regain full use of my left arm and leg. They had predicted the entire left side of my body would be paralyzed, but as is my nature, I proved them completely wrong.”

Recognizing Illya’s endeavor at humor, Napoleon lets the corners of his lips curve upwards in an evanescent smile and murmurs, “As is your nature, indeed.”

He senses Illya’s cheek bunching against his neck in a smile also. Then, Illya says, “Once I was able to give my report to Mr. Waverly about the Affair, and more and more reports came in of civilians around the world going missing, he summoned an emergency Summit Five meeting here in New York. It was the first time in U.N.C.L.E. history that all the regional chiefs convened in one place without it being about the Blue Code. At that meeting, Mr. Waverly and the other U.N.C.L.E. chiefs made the unanimous decision to contact and request for assistance from the United Nations to overthrow T.H.R.U.S.H.. That, too, was a first in U.N.C.L.E. history. What happened didn’t change the stakes just for U.N.C.L.E., Napoleon, it changed the stakes for T.H.R.U.S.H. as well. They went too far. They had hoped to start an all-out _war_ with U.N.C.L.E. by killing those innocents, who were the first of _many_ other civilians kidnapped and imprisoned.”

Napoleon’s chest tautens with dismay.

“How many?”

“There were another seventy-nine similarly rigged satrapies around the world. Some in Africa, China and Saudi Arabia held hundreds of captives more than what we’d encountered in Pennsylvania. U.N.C.L.E., the U.N. and N.A.T.O. forces found them all. In time,” Illya replies, and Napoleon exhales loudly, the invisible band around his chest waning with his breath.

 

 

(To be continued ...)


End file.
